I've gained access to a secret, hidden layer of Netflix. The videos there are absolutely harrowing.
Netflix. Ten years ago, barely anyone had even heard that word. But now, it’s a billion dollar entertainment company that’s almost single-handedly revolutionized how we consume entertainment. As of April 2019, Netflix has over 148 million paid subscriptions worldwide, including 60 million in the United States alone. But despite such a huge customer base, only a handful had heard rumours of a hidden layer of videos that the platform concealed. It has long been understood that changing the ‘region’ setting of Netflix gave the customer access to additional content. In my eyes, this only gave credence to the idea that there was indeed a bunch more concealed content. One subreddit I frequented was home to a user that boasted of his findings. “It’s not about changing the region or messing with the subscription settings, it all depends on the log-in name and password you use. I think I might have figured it out, will post updates soon!” The user never posted again. I began to piece together clues left behind in the user’s comments. Apparently their data-mining breakthrough had come when the user realized that the correct log-in name to use was of Greek origin and began with the letter ‘H’. And so, determined to get to the bottom of such a mystery, I began to plug as many Greek ‘H’ names into the system as possible, using the same names as a passwords. Haemon, nothing. Halcyon, nothing. Halimeda, nothing. Halirrhothius, nothing. Just the same old Netflix menu. But then, on a total whim, I tried Hyacinthus. Instead of the usual Netflix menu, advertising the new series of Schitt’s Creek or whatever, a different menu entirely appeared on screen. My jaw was almost touching carpet at this point. I’d done it. As far as I knew, I was only the second person ever to crack the mystery of the secret Netflix content. A brief thought occurred to me, that the previous poster had seemingly dropped off the face of the earth, but I was feeling far too smug to let such a thought spoil the occasion. There was no Netflix logo at all, and the choice of content was hardly voluminous, just three short videos, each lasting around fifteen minutes. I don’t know what I was expecting, some behind-the-scenes footage, maybe some secret trailers; anything rather than what I actually saw. In the first video, grainy, dated footage showed men with intricately decorated harlequin masks, convening in a wooded area. Slowly, each began to strip naked, before they danced around a sculpture that had been carved out of a tree stump, a sculpture of two embracing figures; one large, one small. The lack of context or music made the whole thing even more disturbing. But then, led by the hand into the small woodland clearing, a blindfold tied tightly around its face, came a small child. I felt nauseous with the speculation of what was about to happen, and almost like it was a slow moving car crash unfolding before me, I couldn’t peel my eyes away. The things they did to that kid, I still see them when I close my eyes sometimes. Hideous acts of lechery that made my skin crawl to watch. Just when I thought it couldn’t any worse, one of the naked figures produced a long, obsidian blade. The look on that kid’s face, my God; even without any audio, it was still like I could hear it scream. Only when I turned the TV off, rushing to the bathroom to vomit, did the thought occur to me, the most terrifying, sanity scarring thought that’s ever entered my head. It wasn’t that the streaming service had access to my name and billing address, and it wasn’t that the mysterious redditor had disappeared after the viewing the same thing I did. I raised my shirt, looking at the set of ‘operational scars’ I’d known all my life, and finally realized what I was looking at. The ‘η’ shape on my chest, is the Greek character denoting a lower case ‘h’. I recognized the child in the video. It was me. Category:Fanfic Category:Creepypasta